For your sales enablement practice, you want to improve your sales productivity (your sales force's ability to generate profitable revenue) . Achieving this goal first requires a strong foundation of the concepts of sales enablement and sales effectiveness. This post lays out that foundation which fuels the mashup of sales enablement and sales effectiveness. I’ve always liked the Socrates quote, “The beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms.” Remarkably, we have relatively few common definitions in the sales profession. So, for purposes of alignment and...

One of the most frustrating aspects of sales coaching is dealing with sales reps who don’t want to be coached. We all have managed these types of employees. They get defensive when you provide feedback, deny they have a development need, or try to deflect the blame for performance challenges. Do any of these sentiments sound familiar? Sometimes despite your best efforts, sales people will resist coaching. When this happens, it is important to not match resistance with resistance. This will only create conflict. What’s more, it will not help you achieve your...

Sales managers must master the critical skill of sales coaching in order to maximize the sales performance of their teams. The role of a sales coach cannot be over-estimated for any high performing team. One common obstacle that many sales managers encounter when they try to coach their teams is getting buy-in. In other words, convincing a salesperson to try a new approach or change a behavior. While it is easy to blame the salesperson in these situations, sometimes it is the sales manager’s approach to sales coaching that is the root cause of the problem. All...

In today’s sales environment, new sales tools and techniques are constantly emerging. It’s easy for sales managers to be so focused on implementing new processes or achieving sales goals that they forget to make time to for the most important aspect of their role: developing their sales reps. Coaching new and seasoned professionals before and after sales calls is a key responsibility. Other tasks and obligations are important, but at the end of the day, all those other things don’t mean anything if a rep can’t conduct a good sales call. Preparation is key Many...

Sales leadership talks about it all the time. Sales consultants advocate it. Sales managers say they would like to do more of it—if they had the time. The “it” of course is sales coaching.  Yet, if you nose around out there, you will often find less coaching is occurring than might be expected given all the voices of advocacy. Why is that? While there are a number places to lay blame, here is a breakdown of four of the more devilish reasons.  Although little coaching is occurring, many companies seem immobilized to do anything about it. This begs the questions:...